Wuhan & Chongqing
Our 4-day Yangtze River cruise started at Wuhan & finished at Chongqing.
Wuhan – The Yellow Crane Tower
This is the landmark tower of the city with lots of myths and stories associated with it. There has been a tower here for nearly 2,000 years. Being made of wood, it has often burnt down. Climbing up it, I thought this one was well preserved, until I was told it had only been re-built 20 years previously.
The Tower has a fascinating tale. Legend says there used to be a wine shop owned by a young man named Xin. One day, a Taoist priest, in gratitude for free wine, drew a magic crane on the wall of the shop and instructed it to dance whenever it heard clapping. Thousands of people came to see the spectacle and the place was always full of customers (legend doesn’t say whether they saw the crane dance before or after they bought wine). After 10 years, the priest revisited the wine shop. He supposedly played a flute and then rode the magic crane to the sky. In memory of the encounter, the Xin’s built the Yellow Crane Tower.
The view from the top of the Yellow Crane Tower was spectacular. There is a nice park surrounding the Tower. The city has the Yangtze running through it. The bridges across are imaginatively named, The First Bridge (I believe the one in the photo), The Second Bridge, etc.
I called them Pagodas but our guides always called them Towers.
Hubei Provincial Museum in Wuhan is one of the foremost museums in China. The museum has a massive concert hall where they gave concerts using traditional instruments. We often had exotic entertainment at the lunches and dinners that were laid on for our group. Unfortunately with little or no explanations, I found it hard to appreciate it all fully.
Street Market
I committed a major faux-pas when I asked the local guide if you called the man carrying goods off a pole on his shoulder a “Coolie”. I got a long heated lecture on the insult that I had just uttered to him, the city, China and the world in general by using such insulting and imperialistic language. Unfortunately I remember I didn’t help my cause by initially thinking that the guide was joking by over-reacting so much. He wasn’t joking and I was a bit more careful with my language after that incident.
The geese and other animals were kept in appalling crowded conditions in the cages. These ones were (temporarily) lucky. However it is the expressions of the sellers that makes the photo on the right memorable for me.
Chongqing was the end of our Yangtze cruise. Another enormous city. It is one of the largest administrative municipalities in the world (30 million+), but I had never heard of it before visiting China.
Chongqing – National Auditorium
We had a tour of the National Auditorium, the pride of the city. However inside, it was just a vast, leaky empty space. I am sure though the atmosphere would be transformed when full up.
